the form itself is easy, it’s the bot detection and spam prevention that’s hard. on my own sites, i’ve given-in and use the highest-level recaptcha, a hidden form field triggered by bots but not humans, and a server-side script for the mailing that also has some spam detection routines. they still get through, but far less often than a naked form would.

if you’re satisfied with your existing comments function, can you simply enable comments on your ‘contact’ page and hide them from public view?

since you’re buying parts, you can specifically look for boards with 6-8 (more than that will require a ‘specialty’ board). 8 isn’t impossible to find. start a build on pcpartpicker, go straight to motherboards and filter 8 or more ‘SATA 6Gb/s Ports’, then sort low-to-high on price. you should find a msi pro am4 and an asus prime am5 that are quite reasonably priced and have multiple reputable vendors selling them.

otherwise you’re looking for an expansion card to add to a board you’ve already got or to expand one of those above for even more.

of course, you need the drive bays to hold them all, too. which can be harder to find at a reasonable and affordable price than motherboards and controller cards.

and even when you do know what you’re doing, you’re probably choosing not to host your own. at least not one that faces the public. a private mail ‘server’ that consolidates mail for you from multiple providers (and sends mail back out the same way) is different.

i have an old wood desk at the office. it just resonates and amplifies noise when i set a desktop form factor external hdd (with its attached rubber feet) on it. it now sits on a couple old-school foam rubber mouse mats.

don’t expect a 19 year old laptop to perform all the tricks something more ‘modern’ can do, such as transcoding video for a streaming media server. also note that a t5600 is not a ulv chip (draws as much as 34w under load, on its own)–so probably not a candidate to run ‘lid down’ without some outside help for cooling.

it’s not fast, it’s not power efficient, it has slow networking (10/100 and 22-year old ‘g’ wifi), and lacks usb3 for ‘tolerable’ speed on extra external storage space—but it will be ‘ok enough’ for learning on.

if you go with something like yunohost or even dietpi, you will pretty much restrict yourself to what it can run and do and how it does it. if you want more ‘control’ or to install things they don’t offer themselves, you’ll need to ‘roll your own’. a base (console only) debian would be a great place to start. popular, stable, and tons of online resources and tutorials.

i use dietpi, which is built upon a minimal debian.

the number of years i’ve run usb->sata adapters and had (up to a dozen or so) bare drives laying around and propped up anywhere i could find a spot…

you aren’t putting a 3.5in in that slimline bay. you might be able to rig something to hold one there, though. that’s where the get ‘‘creative’’ part comes in.

you also have the 2x2.5in at the bottom but you’re missing the rails or caddies for them. should be like 5-6 bucks each or so on ebay or azn. don’t bother with those, though, unless you’re putting in hdd there. sata ssd can just be stuffed in the cage, they ain’t going anywhere.

be careful with whatever mb->sata power cables you have. make sure they’re the correct ones, as they aren’t all the same. you could get away with a 1->2 sata power splitter once on each mb power connection, as the output of each is designed for 2x3.5in hdd anyway.

edit: just looked at a similar model here. removing the slimline optical and stuffing a 3.5in hdd there will obstruct the cpu hsf a bit. might have to swap that for a lower profile cooler to put the drive there… BUT. if you take out the existing hdd (because its caddy thing gets in the way), there is just enough room along the flipout bit between that hdd bay and the 2.5in cage below to fit a 3.5in. would need a little ‘modification’ to the case there to rig a mount for it. but it fits. then the existing hdd can slide back in. (see pic, the ancient seagate hdd is placed in that space)

you’re talking the ‘RED’ series inspiron minitower?

iirc there’s only one 3.5in bay adjacent to the slimline optical bay, and two 2.5in bays in a cage at the bottom front.

bays use drive rails which may or may not be present if the bay was unpopulated when originally shipped.

the pc uses 12vo power supply, so the drives are powered off the motherboard. those cables may also not be present if they weren’t needed for the original configuration.

slimline optical bays can often be filled with a caddy designed fit in the form factor, connecting to the optical power and sata, and hold a 2.5in ssd drive.

you will have to get ‘‘creative’’ to securely mount more than one 3.5in hdd inside.

anything ‘worthwhile’ is probably gonna use a lot of power, burn through bandwidth, or not exactly completely legit and legal.

to monetize the piracy of your users

that’s generally what gets sites and services in ‘trouble’

drivesavers, gillware, and ontrack. those are the ones i refer people to. expect a cost of $700-1000 or higher.

it’s an iptv stb, it doesn’t need much. it’s not designed for subscriber customization or ‘app’ loading.

windows isn’t the problem. it can and will run all day, every day.

your existing box isn’t a server. it’s a desktop pc that you’re doing ‘server things’ on. you want a server, make it one:

move the retro gaming, the ‘shitposting’, the 3d design work, and the random internet use that goes with those things, off to a different pc. doesn’t even need to be that much of a pc. enough for the 3d work and emulators, and a fast lan port or wifi for accessing your ‘server’.

leave the existing one with the *rrs, the storage, the drivepool and snapraid… get everything else off. disable any oc settings you have enabled. it’s a server. then leave it alone.

it all runs on Windows 10 (which is where the issue arises)

what ‘issue’? your hardware should ‘officially’ support win11.

the only 6bay lff cage for it i found online after a quick search was over $400usd.

as others mentioned, msa30 is scsi (yuk). along those lines, you’d want the msa60 which is sas/sata, plus somewhere on the server to connect it to. probably not cheap.

but i really don’t think it’s worth putting a whole lot of time or money into a 15 year box… at least not anything that can’t be used in or with newer stuff later.

i’d probably just grab some 2-5tb 2.5in hdd for media storage and use those before i bought something specific for that old hardware.

dl380-g7 is some really old stuff. 1st gen westmere. not very power efficient for the performance. there’s no hardware encoding (qsv with encoding started with some 2nd gen).

how well it can do software encoding would depend on the cpu. but don’t expect too much, and nothing more demanding than h264 avc at reasonable settings. you’d need a newer video card with hardware encoding for hevc, av1 or anything like that.

iirc there was a 6bay 3.5in option for those, and that cage/backplane might be available somewhere.

i just use repurposed PCs. cost (or lack of, rather) is the prime factor.

the main playback ‘device’ is currently a 6th gen laptop that runs lid down (doesn’t support turbo boost, so heat isn’t an issue at all), and an old wireless kb/trackpad for a ‘remote’.

storage is a hodgepodge of usb hdd, 2.5in hdd, and desktop systems. usually only one of which is being used (powered on) at a time.

i just use a text dump out of ‘everything’ for my ‘catalog’ and have numerous vlc playlists saved. i looked into things like jellyfin but the work involved in normalizing directory structures and filenames would be nightmarish.

matt’s an ass and all, but the service on the .com does have a decent track record afaik.

if the goal is simply to ‘de-google’, then mxroute itself is enough. 3rd party. decent policies. good track record. reasonable price (especially their promos).